At a recent local section meeting I talked with some folks about VIPEr. And one of the complaints (and a very fair one) is the bewildering array of content to sort through. We are perfectly willing to admit, there is a lot of great content on the site that can be a bit intimidating to sort through. While our search engine has improved, it is far from perfect and can often lead to lots of results that you have to sort through. In thinking about ways we could try and help you navigate the content, I thought of using BITeS to help a little bit.

The IONiC VIPEr group has enough funds at the end of our grant to host one additional workshop for about 16 participants.

Well, it's time to dust off the symmetry challenge. First offered in 2009, we've made some changes to the site and our social media presence (I'm looking at you Flo, with your Facebook, and Twitter addiction) that make it likely that we will have more than just 2 schools submitting. If you're looking for a fun competition to pit your students against students across the world, here it is. Since symmetry is usually an early component of an inorganic course, I'm making the deadline March 3rd.

We're so glad to see so many of you lovely people here tonight. We would especially like to welcome all of the members of the Illinois' law enforcement community who have chosen to join us here at the Renaissance Hotel at this time.

Good news, the site is back and functioning well. Bad news, well, let me give you the full story we got.

"On Friday 12/23 there was an outage at the data center where the website is hosted. BlackMesh support was able to restore the site from a backup. Unfortunately there had been an issue with the backup processes for a few days before that, and the most recent error-free backup was from early the morning of 12/19."

As December rolls along, many VIPEr users will find themselves in charge of proctoring final exams, a task that requires maintaining a balance between vigilance, getting work done, and staying awake.  Exams can last up to three hours (someone always uses the entire time) or more. Does anyone have exams set for more than three hours?

To get started, here are a few suggestions for how to survive final exams:

There's an effort underway to make the Gordon Research Confernces more inclusive by supporting researchers with small children and family responsibilities.  Many of us have enjoyed the Gordon Research Conferences, but the immersion type events can be difficult on families. 

Specifically, the letter asks the leadership of the GRCs to consider three changes:

You might recall a BITeS from earlier this semester about a community challenge. If not, you can read about it here. A brief summary would be that I challenged the community to develop some literature discussion LO's on organometallic chemistry. The idea was to model the workshop experience without having a workshop. I got a greater response than I was expecting and we formed two groups.

Members of the Division of Inorganic Chemistry (DIC) should have just received an invitation to vote in this year’s Council election. If you’re not already a member of the Division, please consider  joining. This $12 annual membership fee ($14 for non-ACS members) goes to support the excellent Inorganic programming at both National and regional meetings, including the Annual Spring “Undergraduate Research at the Frontiers of Chemistry” symposium. DIC has become a divisional leader in supporting Undergraduate efforts in both teaching and research.

If you’ve attended one of our summer workshops in the last five years, you know that we always have a session highlighting Technology